Learning Outcomes:
Successful completion of this module will enable students to:
• Identify current and historical trends in screen comedy
• Appreciate how the proliferation of screen technologies has impacted upon comedic content and viewing practices
• Critically analyse the construction of gender and race in a variety of television texts
• Apply a theoretical approach to comedy to a screen comedy text
• Identify a variety of comedic genres and situate them in their historical and performative context
• Write an essay on an aspect of screen programming that develops an argument encompassing elements such as the institutional, societal and cultural features that shape the text.
Indicative Module Content:
This module will cover themes and genres such as the following:
Comedy Theory
Anarchic Early Comedy
Inventing the Romcom
Introducing the Sitcom
The Nervous Comedy and its Contemporary Successors
Cringe Comedy
Black Comedians and US Screen Comedy
Irishness and the Sitcom Form
Unruly Women on Screen
Parody
Comedy and Offence